Economic Insecurity and Discrimination towards Transgender People

This study tests whether acute economic insecurity amplifies discrimination toward transgender women in prosocial decisions. Non-LGBTQ+ adults are recruited online (Prolific) and they are assigned to economic (in)security based on the payday calendar they report. If the current date is 2 to 4 days before their payday they are assigned to insecurity treatment and they do a writing task to prime income insecurity, if its 0 to 3 days after they receive their wage they are assigned to do security treatment and do a security writing task.
and After the writing task, participants report current affect (PANAS) and then play a give-or-take dictator game in which the outcome is the net transfer to the recipient (positive values indicate giving; negative values indicate taking). Each dictator makes allocation decisions for three recipient profiles: a transgender woman, a cisgender woman, and a man. Recipient profiles were identical expect color of the tshirt and month of birth, with transgender status signaled via the profile’s gender field and avatar. The within-subject component is fully counterbalanced using all six possible profile orders (balanced panel; no feedback between rounds), and one decision is randomly selected for payment.

The primary estimands are (i) the effect of economic insecurity on average transfers, (ii) the within-person allocation gap between transgender and cisgender women (a behavioral measure of discrimination), and (iii) whether insecurity moderates this trans--cis gap. Order and carryover will be evaluated via profile-by-position interactions and prior-profile indicators; if diagnostics indicate meaningful carryover, a pre-registered fallback estimates discrimination using the first decision only (between-subject comparison). Secondary analyses examine heterogeneity in discriminatory gaps, moderation by baseline prejudice and demographics, associational mediation via PANAS and CRT, and downstream effects on policy attitudes.